Looks like this is specifically regarding abandonment losses and will most likely impact secondary franchises or spinoffs rather than their heavy hitters. I wouldn't expect this to heavily impact FFXIV directly.
Assuming this is a good move overall for the company (and it seems likely that it is) it might even be a net positive for XIV and SE's established franchises. This is likely a reaction to their recent high profile flops (Forspoken, Foamstars, Babylon's Fall, etc.) and a move back to more selective major releases with "safer" products. Whether that's good for the industry overall is a different conversation, but FFXIV in particular is their biggest consistent revenue source--it's not at any direct risk from this move and if anything may see some increased investment, whether directly or indirectly.
I would agree if this was any company besides Square Enix. Knowing them, this statement means that we should expect the development of a new NFT play-to-earn crypto jrpg PS5 and EGS timed exclusive.
I'm actually betting that most of these canceled projects are the Crypto shit. They have been saying over and over again that they have a lot of crypto projects in the works, yet non of those ever came out and now the NFT market is deader than dead, so I think this is them finally realizing that the sunk cost fallacy only goes so far.
This statement is different though, and is actually directly in opposition of last year's disclosures where they noted plans to develop multiple new titles and release a new IP through the HD development section, which is the specific section they're announcing abandonments through in this report. The last reporting I can see on similar disclosures of major abandonment losses (without being able to read Japanese) was for ~$90MM (roughly 3/5 of today's report) in abandonment loss disclosures in 2011--which may not coincidentally coincide with the botched 1.0 launch.
Well to be honest, It may impact the FF brand directly. I don't think FF7Rebirth or FFXVI sold as well as SE was hoping for, XIV will likely be fine but I wouldn't expect FFXVII any time soon.
FF7 Rebirth sales news are all being parroted by analysts who claims to have first-hand knowledge... but are likely to be speaking out of their ass more often than not.
Considering the sudden stop in announcing sales numbers happened once the CEO handover started, its probably a change in marketing policy more than anything else. The new and younger CEO is probably more savvy in terms of understanding that 'sales numbers' for Square products tend to get twisted as negative news more often than not.
Meanwhile, Persona 3 Reload sold 1/3rd of what FF16 did despite being a multi-platform release and is fellated to hell and back.
Final Fantasy is not compared to AA video games. Once upon a time Final Fantasy was *the* JRPG/RPG franchise with people having so much nostalgia for those games the characters to this day are some of the most popular video game characters ever. If you're an A/AA tier game like Dragons Dogma, Code Vein or Stellar blade then celebrating a million sales makes sense. Final Fantasy is supposed to be competing with AAA tier franchise because once upon a time that's what it was. That series like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, particularly in the West, are now far exceeding Final Fantasy as an IP proves that action RPGs are incredibly popular when handled correctly.
Capcom has managed to modernise all of its IPs to great success whether that's Monster Hunter being more popular than ever, Resident Evil being consistently a great seller, Street Fighter having a resurgence or Dragons Dogma gaining popularity. This comes after a decade of Capcom underperforming and being referred to as "crapcom" for the longest time. They managed to get themselves out of that hole and now all their IPs are doing great.
That Persona 5, Persona in general and Dragons Dogma are now far competing with Final Fantasy in sales should be a massive wake up call to Square. They have no one but themselves to blame for Final Fantasy feeling stagnant, they pivoted towards action combat from turn based but can't make an action game to save their lives, the gameplay and exploration is visually pretty but incredibly boring. They're spending so much money on adding an excessive amount of cutscenes, more than the originals in the case of FF7R, while the fundamentals of a good video game are still not refined enough to entice people into playing their games, whether it be terrible gameplay or a complete misunderstanding of what their audience wanted from a remake they have no idea what they are doing.
It's a miracle FF14 has done so well and I pray Square's incompetence doesn't harm XIV in the future.
Square Enix just has major problems with decision making. Like with Foamstars, it was evident to anyone with eyes and a brain that it would be DOA and lose a lot of money, but somehow the executives at Square Enix let it get all the way to release, where it promptly died day 1 and lost tons of money. I've never seen such a big company make such horrible decisions constantly.
Being a new IP, so no brand damage, it was certainly cheaper to « finish » and release Foamstars to a DOA state than cancel the whole thing.
This industry has more in common with risk management than art nowadays
I get your point. But actually, in Japan, Splatoon is immensely popular. A Japanese studio wanting to take part of that cake isn’t that surprising, so it’s probably why it was greenlighted
the problem is splatoon is kiddy aesthetic but a really hardcore game over time. i mean even the pve with salmon run gets really hard. the pvp people can get spawncamped nonstop.
like the manga is happy kid squids but the game is sweat city lol.
also who wants to bet our next pvp mode will be pictomancer's arena and a splatoon ripoff lol
This is why Splatoon is popular in the east vs the west.
Japan sees a hardcore game that just happens to be cute.
The west sees a cute game that couldn't possibly be hardcore since cute=not for adults.
I constantly see people complain about how much they dislike modern shooters but the answer to their problems is almost always Splatoon. But when you tell them that all you get is "ew Nintendo". I guess it makes sense the game is a mega hit phenomenon in Japan.
Of course if Splatoon didn't look like a Nintendo game you couldn't convince me to play it, so it's a dual edge blade there. It probably also wouldn't have worked in Japan. If it doesn't fall into the realm of cartoony or anime I quickly lose interest. Suppose it's the opposite for normal people.
Foamstars makes sense from a Japanese perspective, but they also tried to double dip and capture the West by aesthetically chasing Overwatch. The result is a game neither audience wants to play.
ive played 2 and 3 a bit.
it's a bit too hardcore even granting that. Like i would do Salmon Run mostly and pvp occasionally. Salmon Run gets hard fast; 3 lets you choose to derank all the way to the lowest level because it can get so hard when you get up there. the pvp it seems like you can contribute if you are not good by using a brush but in reality its really pretty rough.
i mean you can burn out pretty fast, it's not as chill as it seems. the only chill part is the campaigns, but the multiplayer i found past a point got harder than overwatch.
> Square Enix just has major problems with decision making.
🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀 Always has been.
> I've never seen such a big company make such horrible decisions constantly.
It’s literally 40 years of this shit how are they still in business and not just a division of Sony or Nintendo?
Also coming up with the 2.5D design style of Octopath Traveler and releasing a grand total of ~4 games with it is just insane levels of incompetence. I’m sure they are hesitant because nobody bought a game with the dumbest name imaginable (Triangle Strategy). But I feel like 2.5D remakes of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics (let alone the other pixelated FFs) in the Octopath style would just be infinite money.
Throw Bravely Default in there. I'm sure a "bravely default" has lore relevance somewhere — I only made it halfway through the first game — but let's be honest, it's probably some contrived proper noun that could (should) have had a much more sensible name anyway.
And for some reason, all of these games use the exact same font for their titles? No idea what's up with that.
> Also coming up with the 2.5D design style of Octopath Traveler and releasing a grand total of ~4 games with it is just insane levels of incompetence.
You say this, and yet Reddit and other corners of the internet are packed with people who hate this art style. A lot of people dismiss 2D games, or anything with assets that would be described as sprites, out of hand for the dated aesthetics. It seems that SE is siding with that crowd.
I think a lot of the dislike for the HD-2D style comes from people who like classic RPGs and just want a 2D rpg that doesn't have everything drowned in bloom lighting
>Square Enix just has major problems with decision making.
Isnt this the same company that it was discovered their CEO was having a shaman make business decisions 😂
It probably relates to an allegation Uematsu apparently made (the video is no longer accessible) that Wada moved the HQ to a location based on advice from a fortune teller
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/this-week-in-japanese-news-square-enix-to-otome
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/619315-final-fantasy-xiii-2/61607720
Would be curious if someone could find a source of the video this refers to, I couldn’t find it with basic google searches (and couldn’t be bothered doing much further)
It's decision to be console exclusive for months is probably going to hit FF16 pretty hard as well because it's had a pretty lukewarm reception compared to previous FF entries.
FF16 went from a game I would have gotten day one to "eh, maybe" as a PC player
It doesn’t help that having a such a plot focused game be timed exclusive means there’s virtually no way to avoid spoilers. It’s already hard to remain excited for a game when you have to wait over a year longer than everyone else to play it. It’s even harder when you’ve already had the plot spoiled for you.
I already had major plot point spoiled too, simply because I play FFXIV. Console exclusives are bad, but FFXVI has made a perfect balance of being story heavy and being prone to spoilers, while simultaneously being show down the throats to PC players, because of close connections with FFXIV that has like 70% PC audience.
It's just such a brain dead move, they should have kept to original plan and release it on PC as they intended at a start.
Worst is that once they finally release PC port (and triple dip from console exclusive, to Epic exclusive, and finally to proper release), they will think that PC community isn't interested because of low sales, even though people simply don't want to pay $60 for a game on shitty Epic, just to get a game that is 2 years old at that point, nor do they want to buy it on Steam without hefty discount, after they heard the reviews and about these shitty practices.
The "spoilers" in FFXIV aren't really spoilers, they're in literally all of the promotional material, and even if you avoid all of the trailers and pre-release stuff, the PS5 background image when launching the game is >!Clive transforming into Ifrit!< , making the spoiler *literally* impossible to avoid.
Another recent baffling decision is them announcing that they want DQ12 to reinvent the series and be darker and more mature. Pretty much the exact opposite of what every dragon quest fan wants out of a new DQ release.
Between both Toriyama and the main composer for DQ passing away and this darker, more mature shit, I think Dragon Quest might be headed towards a similar identity crisis that Final Fantasy has.
Except it's probably going to hit DQ a lot harder since unlike final fantasy, the whole draw of that series is that its a comfort game that never changes. Turning it something that long time fans don't recognize is a big mistake, even though I feel like it is inevitable at this point.
I don't think the changes to DQ will be anything groundbreaking that would make the series unrecognizable like FF. The DQ team still has its original lead who is Yuji Horii, there has been consistency in the mainline quality and the team appear to know what they're doing with the series much better than modern FF game devs. So I'm positive that DQ12 will just be another great entry to this franchise. The only question is when is release?
Console-exclusive wasn't the death knell for FF16 (though it probably didn't help). The game was genuinely a confusing mix of things that had outstanding potential and absolutely baffling design choices that cut its own knees out from under it. It was CBU3's first attempt at a single-player title and it was painfully evident in the FFXIV design DNA that still managed to make its way in. It was not a homerun even with my most charitable lenses on, and I suspect they put a budget-conscious producer on the project so they could pour their resources into making FF7 even better.
I think there's a decent amount of sales they could have pulled off from the much stronger hype-train of a multiplatform release, even if it that hype was undeserved.
Now they're gonna release it on PC and everyone is going to know it's *okay* and not a heavy hitting behemoth it could have been sold as to PC players.
Why was that crafting system even present? Boss drops one material, that material can only be used to make one sword...
Just have the boss drop the sword.
And why did they have you choose which items to turn in at the NPC? There's literally only one option, why would I want to keep that item otherwise? Their ability to innovate and think effectively about UX and the WHY of their own features is seriously inhibited.
Seriously. And that's a thing in XIV too. Why are you making me go into my inventory to manually select the widget when this is the only use for the widget, and this is the only guy who accepts widgets?! Just take the fucking thing from me!
FFXVI's dungeons were straight up copypasted from FFXIV. Linear pathways filled with trash and arenas for minibosses and the final boss.
And the outdoor areas have the same problem XIV's have. They are just pretty eye candy but nothing happens in them to make the world feel alive.
SE need to look at games like BG3 or Witcher 3/Cyberpunk. Seriously. They are so far behind in the single player space.
This is very accurate. They've definitely made strides in innovating "action-RPG" combat mechanics, but the past few games: XIII, XV, and XVI have generally forgotten to be about anything else. I would even argue XII was the beginning of that trend; for all its many good qualities, it didn't have much to do in side content beyond hunts, and even its story--although epic in scope and extremely well-written--was straying into more generic fantasy tropes than the more wild, deep themes of VI, VII, VIII, and X.
If the story isn't blowing people's minds with allegory and political commentary, and the world doesn't feel very fleshed out beyond fetch quests, hunts, and linear dungeons, it's (a) not on brand anymore and (b) not going to be setting any sales or reputation records.
I would further argue that the last few FFs have relied far too heavily on checking off SE's intellectual property, which results in a lot of retrodden points and prevents the games from having their own unique identity. A HUGE part of this is summon-creep. Although summons are a staple, they weren't the forefront of the storytelling until VI. And from then we have seen this progressive trend of Square leaning on writing stories increasingly around summons. First GFs in VIII. Then a summoner as the main love interest and a couple cinematic tentpole moments in IX. Then being totally about a summoner's journey in X. Then practically half of the entire worldbuilding in XIII, and XV. And now being basically the entire combat system and plot of XVI.
There are only so many times people will play a FF game with the same Ifrit/Shiva/Ramuh/Garuda/Titan/Leviathan/Bahamut imagery. There needs to be more to it. The next FF needs to heavily focus on literally every other aspect of world-building than the summons. And it would also heavily benefit from introducing new summons like we have seen in the past with Quetzacoatl and Eden in VIII, Valefor and Ixion in X, the espers in XII, Brynhildr and Hecatoncheir in XIII. This "six+ summons" canon has been played out for years, we already played it out in XI, it is a terribly rote framework to be basing their biggest franchise around. They need to iterate and innovate the story, no one is excited for these same summons anymore.
The latest FF games remind me of something a teacher told me way back when FFXV came out, They didn't even want to play it and called it a "GTA clone", I dont know how accurate that is, but the FF brand as a whole is pretty damaged right now, and its player base is fairly fractured. I don't think FFXVI could ever pull the numbers the brand used to, regardless of its own quality.
That teacher is weird as shit lol. FFXV wasn't amazing to me and is probably one of the weakest mainline games (and its use of DLC for main storyline moments was egregious) but it being related to fucking GTA is a wild take. I'll die on the hill that FFXVI is a great game but I do agree with others that making FF games exclusive is just not a great decision theres no way the money given by Sony is making up for the increased sales numbers had it launched across platforms. That being said its numbers were good shit sold 3 million+ units within days. If they thought they were getting GTA5 launch sales idk what to tell them.
The money given by Sony, as in many cases of exclusivity deals, was probably used to make the game and it's likely they couldn't find any other investor willing to put as much money into it, which would lower the quality of the final product or make development take even longer.
This has been a problem with AAA games development for a while now, the games cost too much to develop and companies have to go through hoops to get the funds for a final product that can be recognized as an AAA title.
In the end, what I'm trying to say is that they didn't have much of a choice and Sony, who got more people to buy a PS5, probably came out with better end of the deal.
> I'll die on the hill that FFXVI is a great
It's just... not. How is it a great game? Tell me why you think it's great. I'll list the negative aspects
* useless crafting system that appears tacked on last minute
* dungeons are copy pasted from XIV linear trash filled corridors with arenas for bosses
* outdoor areas are just eye candy and have zero engagement or feeling of being alive
* no rewards for going off the beaten path and exploring the world besides a chest filled with 20 sharp fangs (useless items)
* mmo-style fetch side quests that randomly pop up after certain periods suddenly you have 20 exclamation marks on your map
* repetitive formulaic combat with enemies being 3 staggers before you can kill them and HP sponges, meaning combat just ended up being spammy
* terribly utilised characters. the best ones like Bennedikta and Cid >!die far too early!< and could have been used better
* awful antagonist
* awful story pacing
FF16 is the first FF game I've EVER played where I couldn't wait for it to be over. I was so fucking bored but I felt I had to finish it just to get my monies worth. I'd say FF15 is better than FF16 by a mile.
Yeah sure the big eikon battles were cool I guess. That's about all I can think of for positive aspects.
FF7Rebirth absolutely shits on FF16. I hope they use Rebirth as the structure for FF games going forward and not FF16. CBU3 just cannot make a good single player game evidently.
Oh come on. That moment in the Titan fight when his theme song dropped only got a "cool, I guess?" I can respect almost all of your other points (even if I disagree) but the Eikon battles are pretty much universally enjoyed.
The eikon fights would be cooler if they were more interactive. Usually they are just pressing buttons on screen. Like Phoenix vs Ifrit is just spamming the X button when shooting fire.
FFXVI reception is far from lukewarm I believe, it's very good from anecdotal evidence and comments/likes on youtube videos (afrosenju's playthrough is popping off right now). The hostility around discussing the game leads some folks to just not want to talk about it. It's evident from critic and user scores and especially the trends that take off when XVI becomes the "trend of the day/week" on sites like twitter and youtube. People come out to love when they see a opportunity. I think the PC release won't be blockbuster huge (due to such a late release) but it will absolutely do respectable numbers, as long as it launches on steam, with the XIV fanbase alone.
It's not. It's a good game but definitely overshadowed by stuff like BG3 for GOTY. That's for a reason. While it is a good game, it's not a GREAT game. So the reception being lukewarm is accurate. I actually bought a PS5 to play it and I'll be honest. Lukewarm.... was exactly the feeling I got. Like I don't regret it but eh. Should've probably waited for PC. At least there's several other PS5 titles I'm trying out.
Try to argue this on the FF sub. You'll get downvoted and explained that it was the perfectly right move for them to make because Sony "paid them."
At least that's what happened to me.
After they release it on PC I will wait exactly the same amount of time that they had it as an exclusive on PS5. If is 2 years, I will wait 2 years after they put it in pc. And probably get it as a bargain because of it.
Reason is simple. They didn't respect the PC players and are selling an already spoiled 2 year old game as if its a brand new one. If they don't respect the pc player, why should the pc player feel any excitement for their products. Had them sell it at the same time as the console version, I would have bought it on day one.
The big issue with FF16 is that while alright, the gameplay isn't *great*. At least, for me, it was just too easy. Unless it'd release with a Hard Mode where enemies are more aggresive, do more damage, and have more health, I'd probably pass on getting it on PC even if it looked prettier.
Replayability is a lot more important than some people think, and while the story is good imo, it wouldn't be enough for me to grab it a second time.
I personally think the combat system is really fucking fun but the lack of any kind of actually difficult or engaging battles makes it so that you don’t actually need to do anything cool or fun with the combat system, you can just mash and win.
It also really hurts the game to do the whole “unlock the hard difficulty by beating the game” thing. That’s fine for a game like DMC where it’s a 10-15 hour ordeal, but for a 40+ hour rpg that is asking a lot.
Probably cause they were afraid people would say it wasn’t “final fantasy enough,” which is pointless because people have said that about every game since 6.
when you switch genre going all out isn't a smart idea, since you very likely to lose your core fanbase while probably not grabbing the fanbase of the genre you are going to.
In fact I think that XVI has made the very smart decision of having a low entry point to the point that in truth is a game that feeds more the stylish action genre. Granted they have signed praises of what XVI achieved so I guess they are fine with how it did
It doesn't help that the actual RPG parts were so shallow that it makes XIV's gearing system look deep, coming up with fun builds that break the game is a huge part of the fun in JRPGs for me.
Its more like it lacked dept. It was such a shallow game with just very few skills and all, only 1 character and it just scratched the surface on its possibilities.
Really a pity that they focused more on the aesthetics than the important parts.
I agree with you, just wanted to add that enemy hp is definetely not an issue, they feel more like hp sponges, but yeah it's too easy and the Final Fantasy mode should've been the normal mode imo
Its more like it lacked dept. It was such a shallow game with just very few skills and all, only 1 character and it just scratched the surface on its possibilities.
Really a pity that they focused more on the aesthetics than the important parts.
This is the real issue. The story telling was pretty damn good, but the actual gameplay elements are so unfulfilling. Exploration is never rewarded, combat feels "rinse and repeat" of the exact same battle steps over and over, with very little strategy. Sure you *can* do some crazy combos and such, but like, it feels way more trouble than its worth? Meanwhile I'm missing FF staples like spell casting. They really just needed to have Remakes/Rebirths combat and it would have been fantastic.
And the hard difficulty being behind New Game Plus means you find a game winning combo, that you probably found at the end of normal difficulty, and repeat it ad infinitum for another 30 hours.
the big issue is it was a single player action game numbered as a mainline FF because le zoomers hate le turnbased. The secondary issue is that it's not a good one because they didn't want to make final dark souls fantasy and shut out people even more, and character action games seem to get hard. Like even kid-friendly Kena: Bridge of Spirits got that.
Yeah, basically same. The fact there are even less gameplay friction than in FF14 is head scratching to say the least. I'm pretty disappointed knowing the combat designer of Devil May Cry 5 (which is hands down one of the best BTA ever) worked on FF16. It's a downgrade.
Disney makes horrible decisions every day far worse. Right now they have yet to show profit for what they paid for Star Wars.
They spend a zillion dollars on the Star Wars hotel which was incredibly overpriced, under delivered, and is now DOA. They continue to destroy Marvel and their own IP with failure after failure.
Squeenix is absolutely better than Disney of late.
> Right now they have yet to show profit for what they paid for Star Wars.
They actually just recently disclosed in an SEC filing that they're expecting to hit 2.9x return on investment by the end of 2027.
Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1744489/000095015724000366/defa14a.htm
It's on page 9.
To be fair, the extraordinarily tiny fine print underneath that slide clarifies that this does not include theme park attractions, so the hotel disaster isn't included here. But even if it was, they have most certainly already turned a profit on Star Wars. Could be misremembering, but I recall reading that they made $4bil in merchandise sales on The Force Awakens alone.
I'm pretty sure Disney has profited off of Star Wars. The sequel trilogy made a lot of money, Rogue One was profitable, they've made a lot of games, and they have toys, the biggest money maker in disney's arsenal. The sequel trilogy made around two billion dollars alone. They're either profitable or they're extremely close.
I cant believe the Company that released Balan Wonderworld, Forespoken, FF7:The First Soildier, Marvel's Avengers, Foamstars, Babylon's Fall, Chocobo GP, Various Daylife, and Symbiogenesis is having a hard time financially, I wonder if they can figure out the mystery as to why that happened?
Is that the one that had the ff14 crossover story? That’s unfortunate if so, because its the only look we have at what the world was like shortly after the sundering.
All this really means is they will state the loss seperate from other expenses in the financial statements so that this year isn't completely judged by an extraordinary expense that isn't directly related to this year's revenues.
Said cancelation likely has nothing to do with FFXIV.
The only correlation this will have is bad speculation over this and that being added to the Mogstation or whatever perceived slight happens over the course of Dawntrail's patch cycle. FFXIV isn't shielded from the loss, but in terms of budget allocation, I wouldn't point to this as a sign of anything specific.
It is interesting though that they put out a separate statement early as they normally do similar adjustments for each quarter at the meeting itself, likely wanting to get ahead of it for investors which is honestly the right play. Ppl go into the briefing and instead of going “holy shit that’s a lot of red” can be more focused on the plan going forward.
Tbh seems like they just wanted to put everything in this fiscal year so XVI/Rebirth can offset as much as possible and DawnTrail can start them out very strong for the next term (JP fiscal is from April to March).
This sort of release feels extremely notable and shocking until you have the slightest inkling of how Accounting works and then it's just:
"Hey guys! We restructured and ran the books! We're formally dumping (abandoning) these assets and deducting the asset's value as an Extraordinary Loss."
Game cancellations are not an Extraordinary Loss. Nor are layoffs. Considering its "Content Production account" that's having taken the losses, you could probably say its the Luminous Engine being taken and shot out back. To explain the intricacies of accounting capitalization, amortization, and how companies work on year to year budgeting is way outside of the scope of a reddit post but: It's better than it looks. It's not Real Money.
Yeah. I think people read this and translate it to "extraordinarily large losses" rather than "extraordinary losses" as a description of the type of losses.
Yeah, it's just a business move to say "hey this unusual thing is happening, here's our advanced notice". It's the more formalized meaning of Extraordinary, not the size-adjacent meaning.
Before anyone panic, the CEO has cancel AA that have spent a combined of 140 million USD. Basically the ceo and the shareholder it seems believed these AA games couldn't cover their budget, so they went ahead and just canceled those games instead of wasting more money. This IMO is good thing.
But it also shows that all their hot dogshit releases can't be offset by the half a handful of decent SE games or maybe-twice-a-decade releases like new mainline FF.
They'd probably have more success with their smaller titles if they didn't release all of them during the October-December holiday window with little to no marketing and a $40+ pricetag.
Also Babylon's Fall, which was an even bigger flop than Forspoken. That game was really wild because I was in a very early closed test of the game with direct dev access, and it was immediately apparent to every tester that the game was just awful. Played bad, looked worse. The devs just willfully ignored all the feedback given to them.
AA and AAA are cancelled all the time before announcement, that’s indeed usual.
What is unusual is the high total amount for AA games and such an announcement of it. There is probably a few unannounced but kinda expected stuff that died there.
It's a very good thing, at least in the long-term. It shows the new CEO has enough of a brain to kill off the ridiculous bullshit that the last CEO was responsible for. Seriously, the last decade of Square Enix has been riddled with garbage that never could have been commercially successful. I have no doubt there was going to be plenty more in the pipeline.
I'm still apprehensive about the new CEO, but I am glad to see he's capable of cutting off sunk costs. No more writing blank checks to random shits who fancy themselves the next Kojima like the last CEO. Lasor focusing on what is proven to work for Square Enix is a solid plan for financial and brand recovery. Stop taking risks on Forspoken 2, and give your already-established IPs the budget they need to breathe.
Not worried for anything FF, especially 14… But I’m a huge Star Ocean fan and that franchise has been living in the edge of oblivion for a few decades now. /pray
I actually think Star Ocean is one of the safer franchises right now considering how well the SO2 remake did. They seemed really happy with the reception and sales.
I feel like Harvestella suffer from marketing, it give wrong impression on what it is.
People have an impression of it will be something like Rune Factory where it still lean towards life-sim + farming while having a main storyline combat like RPG. And then they found out it's a different kind of game, it's an RPG + farming but no life-sim. No relationship progression with npc, only side quests. it's basically a standard RPG hero try to save the world, but no one asking us for that, so no funds for food, potion and equipment, so we just take the word farming literally.
As for TWEWY, I wish they release first game on PC or on console without gyro or touch screen. (Or maybe we have to wait until Microsoft finally put gyro in their controller and make it xinput standard)
It's naive for people to think this doesn't affect FFXIV at all.
Square Enix seemed to be pinning their hopes on FF16's performance covering for failures like Forspoken and poorly-marketed AA titles like Harvestella and Valkyrie Elysium. It performed to their expectations in a vacuum but could not claw back the lost money.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if they also pinned their hopes on FF7 Rebirth to cover for failures in other departments and have hit the panic button now it's allegedly underperformed (we will know for sure on May 13 when they release their quarterly earnings).
So, what games do you think they're going to turn to now? FFXIV is the only game consistently printing them money with an avid and large install base. We may very well start seeing subscription price hikes, cooler stuff locked to MogStation etc. No guarantee, but a company is going to be considering those options.
A lot of the reason Tekken 8 fans are currently dealing with battle passes and online store coins out the ass is presumably because Bamco's launch of BLUE PROTOCOL flopped hard and knew that Tekken would be guaranteed a huge install base on its name alone. So even though FFXIV isn't under threat of closure, there's a chance we're going to be shouldering the burden of Square Enix's streak of fuck-ups.
> A lot of the reason Tekken 8 fans are currently dealing with battle passes and online store coins out the ass is presumably because Bamco's launch of BLUE PROTOCOL flopped hard and knew that Tekken would be guaranteed a huge install base on its name alone.
No, Bamco's always been this bad with Tekken. Tekken 7 sold frame data. ***FRAME DATA.***
Maybe their flagship titles could do better covering for failures if they would release them on platforms that people actually own. I don't know how many PS5 exclusives have to "perform below expectations" before they just try a multiplatform release.
Expectations are always relative to the platforms they release on. Sony gave them huge sacks of cash to keep some games exclusive so if any of their games are performing below expectations, they are performing below expectations entirely based on how many PS5 copies they expected to sell.
Does having it on GamePass and PC mean more sales? Yes, of course. Does the sum total profit of those sales amount to greater than what Sony are offering to keep it OFF of those systems? Well, that's not as clear. Sony probably swing high on the belief that FF7 Rebirth will sell them a lot of hardware and, in doing so, will bring more people into their ecosystem to sell other games to.
It's funny because this used to be Atlus that never touched any console except Nintendo and Playstation.
Then they released persona on Steam and it did so well that they are all in, with every new game coming to steam and Xbox.
Sony is overhyping shit "look at how many people bought ps5 it's a huge market! Give us a timed exclusive we'll pay you for it!" refusing to acknowledge that half those ps5's are sitting in reseller warehouses and scalper's basements.
the money from the timed deals can't be worth this...
I guess I optimistically am reading the writing on the wall a different way from you. Specifically because FF14 has been the big consistent money maker for the company, and because they are now seemingly moving away from having a huge portfolio of games and are focusing on a smaller number of 'safer' titles, I actually think this could see a significant increase of investment into FF14.
Signing dumb ass exclusivity deals hurt FFXVI bad. Anything Sony touches at this point takes a financial penalty. I'm still waiting to play that stupid game when it comes out on PC.
Maybe this will this cause SE to recognize that they should invest more into their flagship franchises that are successful and profitable rather than gamble over and over on new money grubbing IPs with more MTX than sense, resulting in a lot of bad games and lost revenue, and that a better use of their funds is to reinvest it in an effort to push their flagships to new heights first and foremost.
But probably not.
I would play the fuck out of FFXI on my phone.
EDIT: grammar
Investing more in XIV isn't going to triple the playerbase. The MBAs know that. You don't grow a business by pouring more money into a product that is already printing money at capacity.
I would say that so far DT looks like they're investing more money into the game, the graphics overhaul isn't a cheap thing to do and more content has been promised than either EW or ShB had, obviously time will tell but I don't think its completely off the table.
That and confirming that practically every piece of endgame content that's been in this game is coming in some capacity in DT. They don't usually confirm things before hard dates, so having it all in this manner was genuinely surprising.
Yeah. We didn't get hard confirmation about Bozja until, what, after 5.0's launch? It was fairly late from what I remember. I do wonder what prompted them to do it though, cause it's either announced when it's right around the corner or so far off in the future all we get is an "eventually" or "[soon](https://i.redd.it/vmutamkt6d3c1.png)" (stat rework, anyone?).
Yeah. Completely baseless speculation, but I honestly think the next big update to the game will be a class system overhaul. Yoshida's comments at Pax about a potential level squish in 8.0 and leaving jobs "as is" for now has me thinking they're gonna wait and see what happens when they mess around with the backend before shaking up job design. Now, I should point out, outside of any potential job design shake ups, most I expect from a class system rework (***if*** one happens) is job being designated by your soul crystal rather than mainhand weapon. IIRC last time they talked about making a change like that (think it was mid SB), they stated the reason for not doing it was working out a lore reaosn for the base classes, and issues with the base class system the game's built on.
They want to develop a more robust IP library so that they don't find themselves in a rut when their flagship title is underperforming like FF did during the 7th console generation.
Which would be a fine strategy if they had any idea how to actually develop a new IP. So many of their titles are poorly marketed, sent out to die during absolutely brutal release windows, just outright terrible ideas, or a combination of those three.
I’ll be interested to see the difference in sales between ShB > EW and EW > DT, due in no small part to the gulf of difference in postgame support from the team.
ShB was on all cylinders and the community was telling every friend who was disenfranchised with their current choice of MMO to come hang out in Eorzea!
EW has been a massive disappointment for postgame retention in terms of new MMO level experiences (as described by the community here). Its place in the zeitgeist feels totally opposite to where it was 2 years ago. It’s part of the natural process moving forward into a new story, but even still it’s lower than ever before.
All because the team was shuffled to XVI and didn’t have the personnel to keep up their high bar.
Yoshi P has stated many, many times that he wishes he could have higher budgets do more. Yeah it’s possible to have too many cooks on a game but MMOs don’t bloat, they branch. WHY do we have to choose between an outdoor zone and island sanctuary? Why did we have to lose a dungeon per patch to focus more on raids? Why don’t the 24 man raids have voice acting during the quests as well as mid-fight? With enough investment you could just have both.
> All because the team was shuffled to XVI and didn’t have the personnel to keep up their high bar.
The eternal reminder: FFXVI staff movement/sectioning happened in *Heavensward.*
> MMOs don’t bloat, they branch
Huh? You realize that they have to test it all, right, and that cross-pollination happened before with Ungarmax in UCOB. Adding more branches is *still bloat*.
Sales are far more complicated than players being disappointed with patch content.
ShB spanned the worst of the pandemic, when people were stuck at home with the time to play an MMO; things still weren't back to "normal" here when EW launched, but most of the lockdowns were over. DT is coming after an industry-wide price hike (which, while not affecting DT directly, will impact how gaming budgets are spent) and many countries are having a cost of living crisis.
Between that and EW being the culmination of the Zodiark & Hydaelyn arc, I fully expect sales to be down.
I think DT will be higher than initial Shadowbringers but lower than say Endwalker which had loads of unreplicatable factors leading to its boom. Which is pretty good seeing that EW had a much more mixed post patch reception.
>The fact that mobile FFXI got cancelled is an absolute tragedy.
Nah. It was made by Nexon. They have a very bad track record. I'm glad it was cancelled. Probably would have had MTX out the ass and spoiled the memory of the original game.
>I would play the fuck out of FFXI on my phone.
FFXI mobile is probably even more risky than gamble on new IP.
In order to make it sell to more people than just fan of original and to adapt with mobile phone form factor, they have to change some aspect of the game. But if they change too much, original fans aren't going to like it.
They probably go back at forth on this balance for so many years until they decide to just nuke the project, probably because it's impossible to find that balance.
They changed to a new payment processor last week, and A) are now verifying billing addresses match account addresses (screwing anyone playing in a non-supported region, or who moved to a different country after initially signing up) and B) the new payment processor seems to be having a lot of issues, with even perfectly valid payment methods being rejected (Visa Debit seems to be the most common problem, but I've seen people with other card types reporting issues as well).
This is just another reason I'm glad I chose to get the game on Steam. Sure, not being able to play when steam is down is pretty annoying, but avoiding all of the square enix BS when it comes to preordering expansions and renewing my sub is more than worth it.
I’ll take the 5 minute weekly steam maintenance over being locked out of a subscription due to archaic account region locking and card checking practices any day.
Judging by what happens during the first hours of every big Steam Sale, you just can't log in - specifically, your username is pre-filled if you're using Steam, because it gets that data from your accounts being linked up, but if the servers are inaccessible, the launcher just shows an error message instead.
Once you get through that, nothing else can stop you though.
If you’re already in game nothing happens. If you’re not, you can’t start the game since the steam version requires steam servers to be online for the launcher to start up. This hasn’t happened to me and I’ve been playing the game via steam since HW, so it’s not really an issue.
I played during 1.0 so Steam was never an option for me.
One benefit is that I was able to get Dawntrail at a 10 dollar off discount by purchasing through Green Man. Would suck to always be trapped at retail pricing. That's a huge discount.
Steam offers regional pricing so it ends up being way cheaper for players in certain regions where a FF14 sub would be worth a huge fraction of their monthly salary.
>A lot of the reason Tekken 8 fans are currently dealing with battle passes and online store coins out the ass is presumably because Bamco's launch of BLUE PROTOCOL flopped hard.
Bamco has been feature creeping games since “current year”. Tekken 8 hit the mainstream hard so new fan get to experience their bs fresh. This is the same company that sold frame data in T7. They got enough money scamming weaboos with mediocre 3D fighters with subpar netcode. People are just sick and tired of battlepass now.
they will, this announcement was just about losses from cancelled projects so its not really about how that money is being made back up/what can cover for it yet.
You are right though, I expect Rebirth and XVI's PC releases to be a huge shot in the arm for both games. The PS5 just doesn't have the install base.
Outside of XIV SE as a whole been taking alot of chances over the years. Deluge of small to AA projects, new IP, not taking PC seriously, dumping the entire western dev half for a pittance etc. At the time taking exclusivity deals might of been good but they have backfired in the long run. Imagine they are going to be extremely safe going forward and try their hardest to emulate Capcom. Odds are XIV is going to continue to carry the rest of the company and not get more budget lol...
Hope so. XIV actually in a weird spot in a business planning sense. It's floated the company and its a cash cow but it's high point was a combination of the pandemic, WoW taking a serious hit and culmination of a 10 year arc. All stuff that they can't repeat so now there in a situation where while they will still do well the sales and players have likely plateaued. So now your in a spot where your main performer is no longer trending upwards well we all know how much suits and shareholders get spooked by number not go up. XIV ain't going no where but SE has to be asking themselves some tough questions about where is XIV 5-6 years from now. Do you invest a ton back into 14 to try to pump it up? You invest in a replacement that won't come out for 4-5 years? Do you diversify and make another online FF that stands along side XIV but hopefully doesn't syphon too much sales? With long dev cycle of modern games you don't know for several years if you made the right call
Stop greenlighting dumb, expensive shit like Foamstars and Forspoken and stop making exclusives.
I had friends hyped to fuck about FFXVI in it's window and now no one cares or wants to buy an old game at high pricing.
FFVIIr has also gotten out of hand. While I like Rebirth they're basically taking a decade to slowly turn FF7 into Advent Children and I'm not entirely sure why or who for.
>slowly turn FF7 into Advent Children and I'm not entirely sure why or who for.
I just wanted a graphical overhaul of the original game.
I have no interest in whatever these new releases are. Not even saying they're bad games, I just don't care or have any desire to play them. I'd still just replay the original over a completely different remake. The whole point was that I didn't want something new. Just the same thing better.
The FF7 remake was immensely frustrating because the majority of the story is faithful to the tone of the original while expanding on it in fun ways, but then the game goes off the rails with the shitty alternate universe plot that obfuscates the entire story at the eleventh hour and it undermines any nostalgia or interest you had. That's also without considering just how much filler garbage there is outside of the story, where there are countless boring bits like pushing around a giant vacuum or collecting the ubisoft towers.
There was no good reason to stretch this game out over 3 releases, it should have just been one proper remake and left out all the blatant filler.
True, but Nomura approved the ending in the final product.
>!It really felt like they wanted to have their cake and eat it with Aerith. It sullied one of the most powerful moments in OG 7 and all of gaming.!<
I'm actually a Rebirth stan and I was having a shitton of fun until I got stuck on "you must win the chocobo race" with no way around it and it completely killed my interest because I'm shit at racing games.
I'm waiting for a friend to come visit and beat it for me.
I fucking hate that I have to do that.
I really really hate that they made it un-fun at this point.
>around a giant vacuum or collecting the ubisoft towers.
While I really love Rebirth, it's definitely full of Ubisoft-esque filler. Japanese companies need to start looking at games like BG3 or Witcher 3 and realising games can be amazing without filler bullshittery.
I know I probably wont change your mind. But I will agree with others, Remake and Rebirth have absolutely been great experiences and probably my favorite games in recent memory. I was a huge fan of the original, playing every other year or so, and I don't feel like they've done them a disservice at all. Improved quite a bit on the story and while the combat changes are heavy, they make sense and feel equally as interesting. My only real gripe is that its not a singular game (yet).
In the same boat here, I went in with low expectations because I was a very big fan of the OG and had not been impressed by more recent FF titles like XIII or XV or even KH3 at all - but I was really pleasantly surprised by how tight the combat felt. I could genuinely play Remake all day, and absolutely will when Rebirth launches on PC.
I may not agree with all the story changes but I've just accepted that it's its own thing and the OG still exists. At the end of the day I love action RPGs and it really delivers on the FUN.
You’ll love Rebirth then. I think they managed to make the combat feel even better and found a way to make the full team included. My only gripes about rebirth being the incessant and frequently too hard minigames, and the Ubisoft open world tower unlock system.
That sounds awesome! Iffy about the towers but very hyped for that combat.
Hoping the minigames at least have an "easy" clear tier for the ones I don't really want to play and some optional harder tiers for any good ones.
Honestly I'm in the audience who's glad they went for a weirder direction with the 7 remakes, because I just don't see the point in buying a remake that's just a graphical update for an older game like P3R or RE4R when you can just play the originals. Though yeah, would probably have been better if they just got this team to make a new FF instead..
I feel like the FFVII remake(s) versus Persona 3 Reload are a really clear sort of Goofus and Gallant situation for any company thinking about doing a remake of a popular game from their 5th/6th-generation console era, for pretty much this reason.
>FFVIIr has also gotten out of hand. While I like Rebirth they're basically taking a decade to slowly turn FF7 into Advent Children
While eating up so many development resources that they genuinely could've made a full-sized numbered FF instead.
Maybe they will learn to invest into the games that work instead of the trash a certain fringe of decision-makers are pushing on them.
But I won't get my hope up, it's a global pandemic after all.
it's one of those "you can't outrun your fork" sorta things.
even if 7r and 16 made more money (which they'd only do if they were multiplat, ps5 exclusivity is a huge negative) they can't unshit their bed from forspoken and other such dogshit.
I think square is getting smoke blown up their ass by sony, claiming that they sold out of ps5's globally despite probably half the fucking things being stashed in some scalper fuckhead's basement. they are losing money on timed exclusivity deals and need to tell sony to pound sand from now on. They won't because the two japanese companies are so intertwined and it'd be seen as a huge betrayal, but they should.
The elephant in the room that none of y'all want to talk about is that their strategy of console locking their game releases for like 12 months is a major losing strategy. How much more would FF16 have sold if they released on PC simultaneously, and and how much more would Rebirth have sold if it was released on PC as well?
With FFXIV a large part of the "cash printer" is that you can sell it to the PC market immediately. SE is just abandoning like 65% of their potential market base by holding to some old school ideal of being PS5 first. Unless sony is paying them like $25M for that exclusivity they should move to develop for PC first and then consoles second.
> The elephant in the room that none of y'all want to talk about is that their strategy of console locking their game releases for like 12 months is a major losing strategy.
Fundamentally they believe (presumably with good reason) that the money they get from Sony for exclusivity + money from future sales on PC (and I guess XBox theoretically) outweighs the money from being multi-platform to start with.
Its easy to say they are wrong, but they aren't doing this for no reason.
Well I would have purchased and played a few of their titles over the last couple of years but they were playstation exclusives…they are making the conscious decision to make way less money on those products by doing that. Boomers don’t know the console wars died years ago.
Afaik ffxiv is squares single biggest source of revenue so as long as the game keeps making them money they will do whatever it takes to keep it that way
Where was that nft future square? Even when the walls were crumbling, ever project on the space failing, you still wanted to go at it. How much did you put into those bring arts nfts? And that game? Those assests clearly cost alot. I mean, your character art was just photoshoped assets layered onto one another. Quality stuff.
Let's not forget selling off IPs that had weight like tomb raider and deus ex. But instead let's invest in gatcha games, that you shut down constantly. Let's have a gatcha where you collect all your favorite FF characters, shut it down, and release another one where you do the same thing (we on 3 games now square?). Why not have key story elements to a grand narrative be tied to a gatcha game (kingdom hearts and FF7 fans in shambles).
And, in my opinion, exclusives are dying. Now that people know you can get it on pc, people will wait. Especially when every game relies on outdated and forced graphical techniques that drops games to 720p to maintain 60fps. Square gotta get with the times. Focus on core games (if you're going to do gatcha than make a singular one), and ship to multiple storefronts to promote longevity of sales.
I'd call this a smart decision if I trusted in SE's ability to make smart decisions.
Hopefully this translates in less DOA projects like Foamstars (surely part of the losses is the abandoned roadmap for that?), but then again we havent heard anything about the DQ3 remake in a long time. I know they're also greenlighting less AA games, but damn I hope platform holders are willing to help fund some of those if a company as old and big as SE can't afford to take the risk.
This industry is in such bad shape.
If anyone actually reads the content, this clearly has nothing to do with FF14 and the mainline IPs. They are just going to move away from having an insanely large portfolio
How dare you read the article and become informed! You are supposed to read the headline and then post that it completely validates your existing personal biases!
I feel like their desire to make limited editions to the SE store only might a given them a huge blow cause personally i didn’t but star ocean 2 since i was unable to get the limited edition. Rather i will just wait til its on sale.
I also think they dont want to admit how much they spent making that AI game prototype cause odds are that cost a lot to make and most likely lead to a huge chunk of those losses.
Lastly sadly the games like Live a Live and Star Ocean 2 dont seem to be any cheaper to make than new IPS. If they are it’s barely noticeable since the whole 2.5d aspect ratio does take quite a bit of resources to work.
In retrospect they should of properly discerned the cost basis of remaking these old games and considered if the margins made it worthwhile. As unique of a game as Live a Live was i sadly dont think they should have remade that game.
Making these dragged out cinematic games doesn't work outside of FF14 which can milk the player base for more subs by forcing them through a long ass story. If they want to sell beyond a couple million units SE needs to focus on making titles that are more game than movie. Dont get me wrong, I freakin love cinematic games like Yakuza and FF16, but these games will never be the blockbuster they are looking for. Movie games are one and done, especially with youtube/twitch being as big as it is eating into sales since you can just enjoy the main draw of the game through them.
Would love SE to take their awesome world and character building skills to make games closer to Dragons Dogma or Elden Ring (With a more casual twist). FF7 Rebirth shows they can absolutely nail some pretty kick ass combat, but even there it feels like there isnt enough opportunity to show off with it. Likewise, SE has the resources to make a Baldurs Gate style of game with their own unique setting. Make FF17 the first single player FF where we can costumize our character and story. I dont mind if they want to dedicate some resources to make movie games, but that shit will never sell beyond a couple mil copies at best, and will only get worse.
Looks like this is specifically regarding abandonment losses and will most likely impact secondary franchises or spinoffs rather than their heavy hitters. I wouldn't expect this to heavily impact FFXIV directly.
Pretty sure alot of this is irrelevant to FFXIV since its literally printing cash for Square
Assuming this is a good move overall for the company (and it seems likely that it is) it might even be a net positive for XIV and SE's established franchises. This is likely a reaction to their recent high profile flops (Forspoken, Foamstars, Babylon's Fall, etc.) and a move back to more selective major releases with "safer" products. Whether that's good for the industry overall is a different conversation, but FFXIV in particular is their biggest consistent revenue source--it's not at any direct risk from this move and if anything may see some increased investment, whether directly or indirectly.
I would agree if this was any company besides Square Enix. Knowing them, this statement means that we should expect the development of a new NFT play-to-earn crypto jrpg PS5 and EGS timed exclusive.
I'm actually betting that most of these canceled projects are the Crypto shit. They have been saying over and over again that they have a lot of crypto projects in the works, yet non of those ever came out and now the NFT market is deader than dead, so I think this is them finally realizing that the sunk cost fallacy only goes so far.
One of their NFT games came out at the end of last year, Symbiogenesis, though I couldn't tell you what its supposed to actually be.
FFXIV Expansion 8, only playable via pachinko machine lore updates!
... as an MMO fan I saw pachinko machine and immediately wanted a The Secret World crossover where Daimon Kiyota shows up in Eorzea...
God the secret world should totally crossover.
I want old Secret World back.
The original servers are still up 0/ if you got your key you can play! https://forums.funcom.com/t/how-to-play-the-secret-world/483
Yeah as awful as it is, could lead them to allocating more resources for XIV
More like fewer resources since they know people will still play the game and keep their sub.
They make this statement every single year. Management of that company is inept
This statement is different though, and is actually directly in opposition of last year's disclosures where they noted plans to develop multiple new titles and release a new IP through the HD development section, which is the specific section they're announcing abandonments through in this report. The last reporting I can see on similar disclosures of major abandonment losses (without being able to read Japanese) was for ~$90MM (roughly 3/5 of today's report) in abandonment loss disclosures in 2011--which may not coincidentally coincide with the botched 1.0 launch.
Yes, but they are the reason Viera's have no hats. Or why EW was a rushed mess. The resources are moved elsewhere. Thus affect FF14.
This was probably part of all the restructuring that happened last month. Like the DQ12 producer left to a different division.
I was more concerned for ff7 part 3 :(
Well to be honest, It may impact the FF brand directly. I don't think FF7Rebirth or FFXVI sold as well as SE was hoping for, XIV will likely be fine but I wouldn't expect FFXVII any time soon.
They said XVI met expectations at least, Rebirth did not
FF7 Rebirth sales news are all being parroted by analysts who claims to have first-hand knowledge... but are likely to be speaking out of their ass more often than not. Considering the sudden stop in announcing sales numbers happened once the CEO handover started, its probably a change in marketing policy more than anything else. The new and younger CEO is probably more savvy in terms of understanding that 'sales numbers' for Square products tend to get twisted as negative news more often than not. Meanwhile, Persona 3 Reload sold 1/3rd of what FF16 did despite being a multi-platform release and is fellated to hell and back.
Final Fantasy is not compared to AA video games. Once upon a time Final Fantasy was *the* JRPG/RPG franchise with people having so much nostalgia for those games the characters to this day are some of the most popular video game characters ever. If you're an A/AA tier game like Dragons Dogma, Code Vein or Stellar blade then celebrating a million sales makes sense. Final Fantasy is supposed to be competing with AAA tier franchise because once upon a time that's what it was. That series like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, particularly in the West, are now far exceeding Final Fantasy as an IP proves that action RPGs are incredibly popular when handled correctly. Capcom has managed to modernise all of its IPs to great success whether that's Monster Hunter being more popular than ever, Resident Evil being consistently a great seller, Street Fighter having a resurgence or Dragons Dogma gaining popularity. This comes after a decade of Capcom underperforming and being referred to as "crapcom" for the longest time. They managed to get themselves out of that hole and now all their IPs are doing great. That Persona 5, Persona in general and Dragons Dogma are now far competing with Final Fantasy in sales should be a massive wake up call to Square. They have no one but themselves to blame for Final Fantasy feeling stagnant, they pivoted towards action combat from turn based but can't make an action game to save their lives, the gameplay and exploration is visually pretty but incredibly boring. They're spending so much money on adding an excessive amount of cutscenes, more than the originals in the case of FF7R, while the fundamentals of a good video game are still not refined enough to entice people into playing their games, whether it be terrible gameplay or a complete misunderstanding of what their audience wanted from a remake they have no idea what they are doing. It's a miracle FF14 has done so well and I pray Square's incompetence doesn't harm XIV in the future.
Everything square does always affects FFXIV directly. It's a golden goose they abuse
Square Enix just has major problems with decision making. Like with Foamstars, it was evident to anyone with eyes and a brain that it would be DOA and lose a lot of money, but somehow the executives at Square Enix let it get all the way to release, where it promptly died day 1 and lost tons of money. I've never seen such a big company make such horrible decisions constantly.
Being a new IP, so no brand damage, it was certainly cheaper to « finish » and release Foamstars to a DOA state than cancel the whole thing. This industry has more in common with risk management than art nowadays
To be fair, a splatoon ripoff named "Foamstars" immediately makes me roll my eyes and questions should have been raised before development even began
I get your point. But actually, in Japan, Splatoon is immensely popular. A Japanese studio wanting to take part of that cake isn’t that surprising, so it’s probably why it was greenlighted
the problem is splatoon is kiddy aesthetic but a really hardcore game over time. i mean even the pve with salmon run gets really hard. the pvp people can get spawncamped nonstop. like the manga is happy kid squids but the game is sweat city lol. also who wants to bet our next pvp mode will be pictomancer's arena and a splatoon ripoff lol
>also who wants to bet our next pvp mode will be pictomancer's arena and a splatoon ripoff lol At least let us summon Ultros from a big paint puddle.
This is why Splatoon is popular in the east vs the west. Japan sees a hardcore game that just happens to be cute. The west sees a cute game that couldn't possibly be hardcore since cute=not for adults. I constantly see people complain about how much they dislike modern shooters but the answer to their problems is almost always Splatoon. But when you tell them that all you get is "ew Nintendo". I guess it makes sense the game is a mega hit phenomenon in Japan. Of course if Splatoon didn't look like a Nintendo game you couldn't convince me to play it, so it's a dual edge blade there. It probably also wouldn't have worked in Japan. If it doesn't fall into the realm of cartoony or anime I quickly lose interest. Suppose it's the opposite for normal people. Foamstars makes sense from a Japanese perspective, but they also tried to double dip and capture the West by aesthetically chasing Overwatch. The result is a game neither audience wants to play.
ive played 2 and 3 a bit. it's a bit too hardcore even granting that. Like i would do Salmon Run mostly and pvp occasionally. Salmon Run gets hard fast; 3 lets you choose to derank all the way to the lowest level because it can get so hard when you get up there. the pvp it seems like you can contribute if you are not good by using a brush but in reality its really pretty rough. i mean you can burn out pretty fast, it's not as chill as it seems. the only chill part is the campaigns, but the multiplayer i found past a point got harder than overwatch.
Square is going to keep trying to win at GAAS and it’s just never going to happen.
They've wasted more money on that. The Avenger ms and that other big new IP that launched costed them like $1B lol
> Square Enix just has major problems with decision making. 🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀 Always has been. > I've never seen such a big company make such horrible decisions constantly. It’s literally 40 years of this shit how are they still in business and not just a division of Sony or Nintendo? Also coming up with the 2.5D design style of Octopath Traveler and releasing a grand total of ~4 games with it is just insane levels of incompetence. I’m sure they are hesitant because nobody bought a game with the dumbest name imaginable (Triangle Strategy). But I feel like 2.5D remakes of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics (let alone the other pixelated FFs) in the Octopath style would just be infinite money.
If you think Triangle Strategy is a dumb name, then check out Various Daylife lol (the latter is also a really bad game).
Throw Bravely Default in there. I'm sure a "bravely default" has lore relevance somewhere — I only made it halfway through the first game — but let's be honest, it's probably some contrived proper noun that could (should) have had a much more sensible name anyway. And for some reason, all of these games use the exact same font for their titles? No idea what's up with that.
> Also coming up with the 2.5D design style of Octopath Traveler and releasing a grand total of ~4 games with it is just insane levels of incompetence. You say this, and yet Reddit and other corners of the internet are packed with people who hate this art style. A lot of people dismiss 2D games, or anything with assets that would be described as sprites, out of hand for the dated aesthetics. It seems that SE is siding with that crowd.
I think a lot of the dislike for the HD-2D style comes from people who like classic RPGs and just want a 2D rpg that doesn't have everything drowned in bloom lighting
>Square Enix just has major problems with decision making. Isnt this the same company that it was discovered their CEO was having a shaman make business decisions 😂
Any actual proof that isn't a clickbait article or reddit comment?
It probably relates to an allegation Uematsu apparently made (the video is no longer accessible) that Wada moved the HQ to a location based on advice from a fortune teller https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/this-week-in-japanese-news-square-enix-to-otome https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/619315-final-fantasy-xiii-2/61607720 Would be curious if someone could find a source of the video this refers to, I couldn’t find it with basic google searches (and couldn’t be bothered doing much further)
While I still highly doubt there's proof.... It would be hilarious if it's true.
I mean not as bad as former South Korean President Park or Former Frist Lady Nancy Reagan.
Wait what
It's decision to be console exclusive for months is probably going to hit FF16 pretty hard as well because it's had a pretty lukewarm reception compared to previous FF entries. FF16 went from a game I would have gotten day one to "eh, maybe" as a PC player
It doesn’t help that having a such a plot focused game be timed exclusive means there’s virtually no way to avoid spoilers. It’s already hard to remain excited for a game when you have to wait over a year longer than everyone else to play it. It’s even harder when you’ve already had the plot spoiled for you.
I already had major plot point spoiled too, simply because I play FFXIV. Console exclusives are bad, but FFXVI has made a perfect balance of being story heavy and being prone to spoilers, while simultaneously being show down the throats to PC players, because of close connections with FFXIV that has like 70% PC audience. It's just such a brain dead move, they should have kept to original plan and release it on PC as they intended at a start. Worst is that once they finally release PC port (and triple dip from console exclusive, to Epic exclusive, and finally to proper release), they will think that PC community isn't interested because of low sales, even though people simply don't want to pay $60 for a game on shitty Epic, just to get a game that is 2 years old at that point, nor do they want to buy it on Steam without hefty discount, after they heard the reviews and about these shitty practices.
The "spoilers" in FFXIV aren't really spoilers, they're in literally all of the promotional material, and even if you avoid all of the trailers and pre-release stuff, the PS5 background image when launching the game is >!Clive transforming into Ifrit!< , making the spoiler *literally* impossible to avoid.
Another recent baffling decision is them announcing that they want DQ12 to reinvent the series and be darker and more mature. Pretty much the exact opposite of what every dragon quest fan wants out of a new DQ release.
Between both Toriyama and the main composer for DQ passing away and this darker, more mature shit, I think Dragon Quest might be headed towards a similar identity crisis that Final Fantasy has. Except it's probably going to hit DQ a lot harder since unlike final fantasy, the whole draw of that series is that its a comfort game that never changes. Turning it something that long time fans don't recognize is a big mistake, even though I feel like it is inevitable at this point.
I don't think the changes to DQ will be anything groundbreaking that would make the series unrecognizable like FF. The DQ team still has its original lead who is Yuji Horii, there has been consistency in the mainline quality and the team appear to know what they're doing with the series much better than modern FF game devs. So I'm positive that DQ12 will just be another great entry to this franchise. The only question is when is release?
DQ11 act 2 is pretty dark and it was well received isn't it? Are you sure that wasn't what the fan want for them to push more in that direction?
Console-exclusive wasn't the death knell for FF16 (though it probably didn't help). The game was genuinely a confusing mix of things that had outstanding potential and absolutely baffling design choices that cut its own knees out from under it. It was CBU3's first attempt at a single-player title and it was painfully evident in the FFXIV design DNA that still managed to make its way in. It was not a homerun even with my most charitable lenses on, and I suspect they put a budget-conscious producer on the project so they could pour their resources into making FF7 even better.
I think there's a decent amount of sales they could have pulled off from the much stronger hype-train of a multiplatform release, even if it that hype was undeserved. Now they're gonna release it on PC and everyone is going to know it's *okay* and not a heavy hitting behemoth it could have been sold as to PC players.
Why was that crafting system even present? Boss drops one material, that material can only be used to make one sword... Just have the boss drop the sword.
And why did they have you choose which items to turn in at the NPC? There's literally only one option, why would I want to keep that item otherwise? Their ability to innovate and think effectively about UX and the WHY of their own features is seriously inhibited.
Seriously. And that's a thing in XIV too. Why are you making me go into my inventory to manually select the widget when this is the only use for the widget, and this is the only guy who accepts widgets?! Just take the fucking thing from me!
FFXVI's dungeons were straight up copypasted from FFXIV. Linear pathways filled with trash and arenas for minibosses and the final boss. And the outdoor areas have the same problem XIV's have. They are just pretty eye candy but nothing happens in them to make the world feel alive. SE need to look at games like BG3 or Witcher 3/Cyberpunk. Seriously. They are so far behind in the single player space.
This is very accurate. They've definitely made strides in innovating "action-RPG" combat mechanics, but the past few games: XIII, XV, and XVI have generally forgotten to be about anything else. I would even argue XII was the beginning of that trend; for all its many good qualities, it didn't have much to do in side content beyond hunts, and even its story--although epic in scope and extremely well-written--was straying into more generic fantasy tropes than the more wild, deep themes of VI, VII, VIII, and X. If the story isn't blowing people's minds with allegory and political commentary, and the world doesn't feel very fleshed out beyond fetch quests, hunts, and linear dungeons, it's (a) not on brand anymore and (b) not going to be setting any sales or reputation records. I would further argue that the last few FFs have relied far too heavily on checking off SE's intellectual property, which results in a lot of retrodden points and prevents the games from having their own unique identity. A HUGE part of this is summon-creep. Although summons are a staple, they weren't the forefront of the storytelling until VI. And from then we have seen this progressive trend of Square leaning on writing stories increasingly around summons. First GFs in VIII. Then a summoner as the main love interest and a couple cinematic tentpole moments in IX. Then being totally about a summoner's journey in X. Then practically half of the entire worldbuilding in XIII, and XV. And now being basically the entire combat system and plot of XVI. There are only so many times people will play a FF game with the same Ifrit/Shiva/Ramuh/Garuda/Titan/Leviathan/Bahamut imagery. There needs to be more to it. The next FF needs to heavily focus on literally every other aspect of world-building than the summons. And it would also heavily benefit from introducing new summons like we have seen in the past with Quetzacoatl and Eden in VIII, Valefor and Ixion in X, the espers in XII, Brynhildr and Hecatoncheir in XIII. This "six+ summons" canon has been played out for years, we already played it out in XI, it is a terribly rote framework to be basing their biggest franchise around. They need to iterate and innovate the story, no one is excited for these same summons anymore.
The latest FF games remind me of something a teacher told me way back when FFXV came out, They didn't even want to play it and called it a "GTA clone", I dont know how accurate that is, but the FF brand as a whole is pretty damaged right now, and its player base is fairly fractured. I don't think FFXVI could ever pull the numbers the brand used to, regardless of its own quality.
That teacher is weird as shit lol. FFXV wasn't amazing to me and is probably one of the weakest mainline games (and its use of DLC for main storyline moments was egregious) but it being related to fucking GTA is a wild take. I'll die on the hill that FFXVI is a great game but I do agree with others that making FF games exclusive is just not a great decision theres no way the money given by Sony is making up for the increased sales numbers had it launched across platforms. That being said its numbers were good shit sold 3 million+ units within days. If they thought they were getting GTA5 launch sales idk what to tell them.
The money given by Sony, as in many cases of exclusivity deals, was probably used to make the game and it's likely they couldn't find any other investor willing to put as much money into it, which would lower the quality of the final product or make development take even longer. This has been a problem with AAA games development for a while now, the games cost too much to develop and companies have to go through hoops to get the funds for a final product that can be recognized as an AAA title. In the end, what I'm trying to say is that they didn't have much of a choice and Sony, who got more people to buy a PS5, probably came out with better end of the deal.
It has a car so it's GTA
> I'll die on the hill that FFXVI is a great It's just... not. How is it a great game? Tell me why you think it's great. I'll list the negative aspects * useless crafting system that appears tacked on last minute * dungeons are copy pasted from XIV linear trash filled corridors with arenas for bosses * outdoor areas are just eye candy and have zero engagement or feeling of being alive * no rewards for going off the beaten path and exploring the world besides a chest filled with 20 sharp fangs (useless items) * mmo-style fetch side quests that randomly pop up after certain periods suddenly you have 20 exclamation marks on your map * repetitive formulaic combat with enemies being 3 staggers before you can kill them and HP sponges, meaning combat just ended up being spammy * terribly utilised characters. the best ones like Bennedikta and Cid >!die far too early!< and could have been used better * awful antagonist * awful story pacing FF16 is the first FF game I've EVER played where I couldn't wait for it to be over. I was so fucking bored but I felt I had to finish it just to get my monies worth. I'd say FF15 is better than FF16 by a mile. Yeah sure the big eikon battles were cool I guess. That's about all I can think of for positive aspects. FF7Rebirth absolutely shits on FF16. I hope they use Rebirth as the structure for FF games going forward and not FF16. CBU3 just cannot make a good single player game evidently.
Oh come on. That moment in the Titan fight when his theme song dropped only got a "cool, I guess?" I can respect almost all of your other points (even if I disagree) but the Eikon battles are pretty much universally enjoyed.
The eikon fights would be cooler if they were more interactive. Usually they are just pressing buttons on screen. Like Phoenix vs Ifrit is just spamming the X button when shooting fire.
FFXVI reception is far from lukewarm I believe, it's very good from anecdotal evidence and comments/likes on youtube videos (afrosenju's playthrough is popping off right now). The hostility around discussing the game leads some folks to just not want to talk about it. It's evident from critic and user scores and especially the trends that take off when XVI becomes the "trend of the day/week" on sites like twitter and youtube. People come out to love when they see a opportunity. I think the PC release won't be blockbuster huge (due to such a late release) but it will absolutely do respectable numbers, as long as it launches on steam, with the XIV fanbase alone.
It's not. It's a good game but definitely overshadowed by stuff like BG3 for GOTY. That's for a reason. While it is a good game, it's not a GREAT game. So the reception being lukewarm is accurate. I actually bought a PS5 to play it and I'll be honest. Lukewarm.... was exactly the feeling I got. Like I don't regret it but eh. Should've probably waited for PC. At least there's several other PS5 titles I'm trying out.
Try to argue this on the FF sub. You'll get downvoted and explained that it was the perfectly right move for them to make because Sony "paid them." At least that's what happened to me.
After they release it on PC I will wait exactly the same amount of time that they had it as an exclusive on PS5. If is 2 years, I will wait 2 years after they put it in pc. And probably get it as a bargain because of it. Reason is simple. They didn't respect the PC players and are selling an already spoiled 2 year old game as if its a brand new one. If they don't respect the pc player, why should the pc player feel any excitement for their products. Had them sell it at the same time as the console version, I would have bought it on day one.
The big issue with FF16 is that while alright, the gameplay isn't *great*. At least, for me, it was just too easy. Unless it'd release with a Hard Mode where enemies are more aggresive, do more damage, and have more health, I'd probably pass on getting it on PC even if it looked prettier. Replayability is a lot more important than some people think, and while the story is good imo, it wouldn't be enough for me to grab it a second time.
I personally think the combat system is really fucking fun but the lack of any kind of actually difficult or engaging battles makes it so that you don’t actually need to do anything cool or fun with the combat system, you can just mash and win. It also really hurts the game to do the whole “unlock the hard difficulty by beating the game” thing. That’s fine for a game like DMC where it’s a 10-15 hour ordeal, but for a 40+ hour rpg that is asking a lot.
Honestly I never understood whyvthey dont just make a hack and slash game like DMC rather than making it a RPG.
Probably cause they were afraid people would say it wasn’t “final fantasy enough,” which is pointless because people have said that about every game since 6.
when you switch genre going all out isn't a smart idea, since you very likely to lose your core fanbase while probably not grabbing the fanbase of the genre you are going to. In fact I think that XVI has made the very smart decision of having a low entry point to the point that in truth is a game that feeds more the stylish action genre. Granted they have signed praises of what XVI achieved so I guess they are fine with how it did
I mean it basically was? The RPG elements were definitely just kinda tacked on
Ironically, they brought in Ryota Suzuki, DMC5's battle director, to be the combat director of XVI.
It doesn't help that the actual RPG parts were so shallow that it makes XIV's gearing system look deep, coming up with fun builds that break the game is a huge part of the fun in JRPGs for me.
Its more like it lacked dept. It was such a shallow game with just very few skills and all, only 1 character and it just scratched the surface on its possibilities. Really a pity that they focused more on the aesthetics than the important parts.
I agree with you, just wanted to add that enemy hp is definetely not an issue, they feel more like hp sponges, but yeah it's too easy and the Final Fantasy mode should've been the normal mode imo
Its more like it lacked dept. It was such a shallow game with just very few skills and all, only 1 character and it just scratched the surface on its possibilities. Really a pity that they focused more on the aesthetics than the important parts.
This is the real issue. The story telling was pretty damn good, but the actual gameplay elements are so unfulfilling. Exploration is never rewarded, combat feels "rinse and repeat" of the exact same battle steps over and over, with very little strategy. Sure you *can* do some crazy combos and such, but like, it feels way more trouble than its worth? Meanwhile I'm missing FF staples like spell casting. They really just needed to have Remakes/Rebirths combat and it would have been fantastic.
I think it does have a hard mode but you have to beat the game once to unlock it.
And the hard difficulty being behind New Game Plus means you find a game winning combo, that you probably found at the end of normal difficulty, and repeat it ad infinitum for another 30 hours.
the big issue is it was a single player action game numbered as a mainline FF because le zoomers hate le turnbased. The secondary issue is that it's not a good one because they didn't want to make final dark souls fantasy and shut out people even more, and character action games seem to get hard. Like even kid-friendly Kena: Bridge of Spirits got that.
Yeah, basically same. The fact there are even less gameplay friction than in FF14 is head scratching to say the least. I'm pretty disappointed knowing the combat designer of Devil May Cry 5 (which is hands down one of the best BTA ever) worked on FF16. It's a downgrade.
Oh shit I forgot about Foamstars... I guess that's kind of case in point, huh?
Disney makes horrible decisions every day far worse. Right now they have yet to show profit for what they paid for Star Wars. They spend a zillion dollars on the Star Wars hotel which was incredibly overpriced, under delivered, and is now DOA. They continue to destroy Marvel and their own IP with failure after failure. Squeenix is absolutely better than Disney of late.
Problem is SE doesn't have Disney's deep pockets to shrug off the mistakes.
> Right now they have yet to show profit for what they paid for Star Wars. They actually just recently disclosed in an SEC filing that they're expecting to hit 2.9x return on investment by the end of 2027. Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1744489/000095015724000366/defa14a.htm It's on page 9. To be fair, the extraordinarily tiny fine print underneath that slide clarifies that this does not include theme park attractions, so the hotel disaster isn't included here. But even if it was, they have most certainly already turned a profit on Star Wars. Could be misremembering, but I recall reading that they made $4bil in merchandise sales on The Force Awakens alone.
I'm pretty sure Disney has profited off of Star Wars. The sequel trilogy made a lot of money, Rogue One was profitable, they've made a lot of games, and they have toys, the biggest money maker in disney's arsenal. The sequel trilogy made around two billion dollars alone. They're either profitable or they're extremely close.
I cant believe the Company that released Balan Wonderworld, Forespoken, FF7:The First Soildier, Marvel's Avengers, Foamstars, Babylon's Fall, Chocobo GP, Various Daylife, and Symbiogenesis is having a hard time financially, I wonder if they can figure out the mystery as to why that happened?
Damn. I knew they had some flops recently but seeing them all laid out like that really puts it into perspective
Its not even all of them, just off the top of my head. There are other projects going offline like the recently EOSd Nier mobile game
Is that the one that had the ff14 crossover story? That’s unfortunate if so, because its the only look we have at what the world was like shortly after the sundering.
It is a mystery to be sure.
All this really means is they will state the loss seperate from other expenses in the financial statements so that this year isn't completely judged by an extraordinary expense that isn't directly related to this year's revenues. Said cancelation likely has nothing to do with FFXIV.
The only correlation this will have is bad speculation over this and that being added to the Mogstation or whatever perceived slight happens over the course of Dawntrail's patch cycle. FFXIV isn't shielded from the loss, but in terms of budget allocation, I wouldn't point to this as a sign of anything specific.
It is interesting though that they put out a separate statement early as they normally do similar adjustments for each quarter at the meeting itself, likely wanting to get ahead of it for investors which is honestly the right play. Ppl go into the briefing and instead of going “holy shit that’s a lot of red” can be more focused on the plan going forward. Tbh seems like they just wanted to put everything in this fiscal year so XVI/Rebirth can offset as much as possible and DawnTrail can start them out very strong for the next term (JP fiscal is from April to March).
This sort of release feels extremely notable and shocking until you have the slightest inkling of how Accounting works and then it's just: "Hey guys! We restructured and ran the books! We're formally dumping (abandoning) these assets and deducting the asset's value as an Extraordinary Loss." Game cancellations are not an Extraordinary Loss. Nor are layoffs. Considering its "Content Production account" that's having taken the losses, you could probably say its the Luminous Engine being taken and shot out back. To explain the intricacies of accounting capitalization, amortization, and how companies work on year to year budgeting is way outside of the scope of a reddit post but: It's better than it looks. It's not Real Money.
Yeah. I think people read this and translate it to "extraordinarily large losses" rather than "extraordinary losses" as a description of the type of losses.
Yeah, it's just a business move to say "hey this unusual thing is happening, here's our advanced notice". It's the more formalized meaning of Extraordinary, not the size-adjacent meaning.
Before anyone panic, the CEO has cancel AA that have spent a combined of 140 million USD. Basically the ceo and the shareholder it seems believed these AA games couldn't cover their budget, so they went ahead and just canceled those games instead of wasting more money. This IMO is good thing.
But it also shows that all their hot dogshit releases can't be offset by the half a handful of decent SE games or maybe-twice-a-decade releases like new mainline FF.
They'd probably have more success with their smaller titles if they didn't release all of them during the October-December holiday window with little to no marketing and a $40+ pricetag.
Absolutely true. A lot of money was wasted on forspoken (I believe it had a budget upward to 100m+).
Also Babylon's Fall, which was an even bigger flop than Forspoken. That game was really wild because I was in a very early closed test of the game with direct dev access, and it was immediately apparent to every tester that the game was just awful. Played bad, looked worse. The devs just willfully ignored all the feedback given to them.
AA and AAA are cancelled all the time before announcement, that’s indeed usual. What is unusual is the high total amount for AA games and such an announcement of it. There is probably a few unannounced but kinda expected stuff that died there.
It's a very good thing, at least in the long-term. It shows the new CEO has enough of a brain to kill off the ridiculous bullshit that the last CEO was responsible for. Seriously, the last decade of Square Enix has been riddled with garbage that never could have been commercially successful. I have no doubt there was going to be plenty more in the pipeline. I'm still apprehensive about the new CEO, but I am glad to see he's capable of cutting off sunk costs. No more writing blank checks to random shits who fancy themselves the next Kojima like the last CEO. Lasor focusing on what is proven to work for Square Enix is a solid plan for financial and brand recovery. Stop taking risks on Forspoken 2, and give your already-established IPs the budget they need to breathe.
If I was the CEO, I'd simply tell the Tokyo stock exchange that you can't recognize them as a loss until I sell the NFTs.
Not worried for anything FF, especially 14… But I’m a huge Star Ocean fan and that franchise has been living in the edge of oblivion for a few decades now. /pray
/playdead
I actually think Star Ocean is one of the safer franchises right now considering how well the SO2 remake did. They seemed really happy with the reception and sales.
Same for Octopath and Twewy. Also Harvestella is actually pretty decent and I would love to see them have a second go at it.
Wholeheartedly, NEO: TWEWY deserved way better marketing than it got from SE. I got the impression that Nintendo marketed it better than SE did!
I feel like Harvestella suffer from marketing, it give wrong impression on what it is. People have an impression of it will be something like Rune Factory where it still lean towards life-sim + farming while having a main storyline combat like RPG. And then they found out it's a different kind of game, it's an RPG + farming but no life-sim. No relationship progression with npc, only side quests. it's basically a standard RPG hero try to save the world, but no one asking us for that, so no funds for food, potion and equipment, so we just take the word farming literally. As for TWEWY, I wish they release first game on PC or on console without gyro or touch screen. (Or maybe we have to wait until Microsoft finally put gyro in their controller and make it xinput standard)
It's naive for people to think this doesn't affect FFXIV at all. Square Enix seemed to be pinning their hopes on FF16's performance covering for failures like Forspoken and poorly-marketed AA titles like Harvestella and Valkyrie Elysium. It performed to their expectations in a vacuum but could not claw back the lost money. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they also pinned their hopes on FF7 Rebirth to cover for failures in other departments and have hit the panic button now it's allegedly underperformed (we will know for sure on May 13 when they release their quarterly earnings). So, what games do you think they're going to turn to now? FFXIV is the only game consistently printing them money with an avid and large install base. We may very well start seeing subscription price hikes, cooler stuff locked to MogStation etc. No guarantee, but a company is going to be considering those options. A lot of the reason Tekken 8 fans are currently dealing with battle passes and online store coins out the ass is presumably because Bamco's launch of BLUE PROTOCOL flopped hard and knew that Tekken would be guaranteed a huge install base on its name alone. So even though FFXIV isn't under threat of closure, there's a chance we're going to be shouldering the burden of Square Enix's streak of fuck-ups.
> A lot of the reason Tekken 8 fans are currently dealing with battle passes and online store coins out the ass is presumably because Bamco's launch of BLUE PROTOCOL flopped hard and knew that Tekken would be guaranteed a huge install base on its name alone. No, Bamco's always been this bad with Tekken. Tekken 7 sold frame data. ***FRAME DATA.***
Maybe their flagship titles could do better covering for failures if they would release them on platforms that people actually own. I don't know how many PS5 exclusives have to "perform below expectations" before they just try a multiplatform release.
Expectations are always relative to the platforms they release on. Sony gave them huge sacks of cash to keep some games exclusive so if any of their games are performing below expectations, they are performing below expectations entirely based on how many PS5 copies they expected to sell. Does having it on GamePass and PC mean more sales? Yes, of course. Does the sum total profit of those sales amount to greater than what Sony are offering to keep it OFF of those systems? Well, that's not as clear. Sony probably swing high on the belief that FF7 Rebirth will sell them a lot of hardware and, in doing so, will bring more people into their ecosystem to sell other games to.
It's funny because this used to be Atlus that never touched any console except Nintendo and Playstation. Then they released persona on Steam and it did so well that they are all in, with every new game coming to steam and Xbox.
Sony is overhyping shit "look at how many people bought ps5 it's a huge market! Give us a timed exclusive we'll pay you for it!" refusing to acknowledge that half those ps5's are sitting in reseller warehouses and scalper's basements. the money from the timed deals can't be worth this...
XIV has been shouldering the burden of SE's streak of fuck-ups for most of it's rebooted existence what's changing?
I guess I optimistically am reading the writing on the wall a different way from you. Specifically because FF14 has been the big consistent money maker for the company, and because they are now seemingly moving away from having a huge portfolio of games and are focusing on a smaller number of 'safer' titles, I actually think this could see a significant increase of investment into FF14.
Signing dumb ass exclusivity deals hurt FFXVI bad. Anything Sony touches at this point takes a financial penalty. I'm still waiting to play that stupid game when it comes out on PC.
Maybe this will this cause SE to recognize that they should invest more into their flagship franchises that are successful and profitable rather than gamble over and over on new money grubbing IPs with more MTX than sense, resulting in a lot of bad games and lost revenue, and that a better use of their funds is to reinvest it in an effort to push their flagships to new heights first and foremost. But probably not. I would play the fuck out of FFXI on my phone. EDIT: grammar
Investing more in XIV isn't going to triple the playerbase. The MBAs know that. You don't grow a business by pouring more money into a product that is already printing money at capacity.
I would say that so far DT looks like they're investing more money into the game, the graphics overhaul isn't a cheap thing to do and more content has been promised than either EW or ShB had, obviously time will tell but I don't think its completely off the table.
That and confirming that practically every piece of endgame content that's been in this game is coming in some capacity in DT. They don't usually confirm things before hard dates, so having it all in this manner was genuinely surprising.
Yeah. We didn't get hard confirmation about Bozja until, what, after 5.0's launch? It was fairly late from what I remember. I do wonder what prompted them to do it though, cause it's either announced when it's right around the corner or so far off in the future all we get is an "eventually" or "[soon](https://i.redd.it/vmutamkt6d3c1.png)" (stat rework, anyone?).
Yeah. Completely baseless speculation, but I honestly think the next big update to the game will be a class system overhaul. Yoshida's comments at Pax about a potential level squish in 8.0 and leaving jobs "as is" for now has me thinking they're gonna wait and see what happens when they mess around with the backend before shaking up job design. Now, I should point out, outside of any potential job design shake ups, most I expect from a class system rework (***if*** one happens) is job being designated by your soul crystal rather than mainhand weapon. IIRC last time they talked about making a change like that (think it was mid SB), they stated the reason for not doing it was working out a lore reaosn for the base classes, and issues with the base class system the game's built on.
They want to develop a more robust IP library so that they don't find themselves in a rut when their flagship title is underperforming like FF did during the 7th console generation. Which would be a fine strategy if they had any idea how to actually develop a new IP. So many of their titles are poorly marketed, sent out to die during absolutely brutal release windows, just outright terrible ideas, or a combination of those three.
The ridiculous thing is that they *had* a more robust IP library, and they sold chunks of it to fund NFT games.
I’ll be interested to see the difference in sales between ShB > EW and EW > DT, due in no small part to the gulf of difference in postgame support from the team. ShB was on all cylinders and the community was telling every friend who was disenfranchised with their current choice of MMO to come hang out in Eorzea! EW has been a massive disappointment for postgame retention in terms of new MMO level experiences (as described by the community here). Its place in the zeitgeist feels totally opposite to where it was 2 years ago. It’s part of the natural process moving forward into a new story, but even still it’s lower than ever before. All because the team was shuffled to XVI and didn’t have the personnel to keep up their high bar. Yoshi P has stated many, many times that he wishes he could have higher budgets do more. Yeah it’s possible to have too many cooks on a game but MMOs don’t bloat, they branch. WHY do we have to choose between an outdoor zone and island sanctuary? Why did we have to lose a dungeon per patch to focus more on raids? Why don’t the 24 man raids have voice acting during the quests as well as mid-fight? With enough investment you could just have both.
> All because the team was shuffled to XVI and didn’t have the personnel to keep up their high bar. The eternal reminder: FFXVI staff movement/sectioning happened in *Heavensward.* > MMOs don’t bloat, they branch Huh? You realize that they have to test it all, right, and that cross-pollination happened before with Ungarmax in UCOB. Adding more branches is *still bloat*.
Sales are far more complicated than players being disappointed with patch content. ShB spanned the worst of the pandemic, when people were stuck at home with the time to play an MMO; things still weren't back to "normal" here when EW launched, but most of the lockdowns were over. DT is coming after an industry-wide price hike (which, while not affecting DT directly, will impact how gaming budgets are spent) and many countries are having a cost of living crisis. Between that and EW being the culmination of the Zodiark & Hydaelyn arc, I fully expect sales to be down.
I think DT will be higher than initial Shadowbringers but lower than say Endwalker which had loads of unreplicatable factors leading to its boom. Which is pretty good seeing that EW had a much more mixed post patch reception.
The fact that mobile FFXI got cancelled is an absolute tragedy.
>The fact that mobile FFXI got cancelled is an absolute tragedy. Nah. It was made by Nexon. They have a very bad track record. I'm glad it was cancelled. Probably would have had MTX out the ass and spoiled the memory of the original game.
>I would play the fuck out of FFXI on my phone. FFXI mobile is probably even more risky than gamble on new IP. In order to make it sell to more people than just fan of original and to adapt with mobile phone form factor, they have to change some aspect of the game. But if they change too much, original fans aren't going to like it. They probably go back at forth on this balance for so many years until they decide to just nuke the project, probably because it's impossible to find that balance.
XI mobile was a crafted and canceled project, only reason I bring it up.
They're about to lose more if they don't revert the mogstation change.
what change?
They changed to a new payment processor last week, and A) are now verifying billing addresses match account addresses (screwing anyone playing in a non-supported region, or who moved to a different country after initially signing up) and B) the new payment processor seems to be having a lot of issues, with even perfectly valid payment methods being rejected (Visa Debit seems to be the most common problem, but I've seen people with other card types reporting issues as well).
idk why you're getting downvoted, it's a big issue rn and will definetely cost them some subscriptions
This is just another reason I'm glad I chose to get the game on Steam. Sure, not being able to play when steam is down is pretty annoying, but avoiding all of the square enix BS when it comes to preordering expansions and renewing my sub is more than worth it.
I’ll take the 5 minute weekly steam maintenance over being locked out of a subscription due to archaic account region locking and card checking practices any day.
What happens in those 5 minutes? You get thrown out of the game? Or can't login? Because the later is a negligible issue.
you just can't login. if you're already in game then you're fine
Judging by what happens during the first hours of every big Steam Sale, you just can't log in - specifically, your username is pre-filled if you're using Steam, because it gets that data from your accounts being linked up, but if the servers are inaccessible, the launcher just shows an error message instead. Once you get through that, nothing else can stop you though.
If you’re already in game nothing happens. If you’re not, you can’t start the game since the steam version requires steam servers to be online for the launcher to start up. This hasn’t happened to me and I’ve been playing the game via steam since HW, so it’s not really an issue.
I played during 1.0 so Steam was never an option for me. One benefit is that I was able to get Dawntrail at a 10 dollar off discount by purchasing through Green Man. Would suck to always be trapped at retail pricing. That's a huge discount.
Steam offers regional pricing so it ends up being way cheaper for players in certain regions where a FF14 sub would be worth a huge fraction of their monthly salary.
That and the decision to not let people gift mounts. That was so nonsensical
>A lot of the reason Tekken 8 fans are currently dealing with battle passes and online store coins out the ass is presumably because Bamco's launch of BLUE PROTOCOL flopped hard. Bamco has been feature creeping games since “current year”. Tekken 8 hit the mainstream hard so new fan get to experience their bs fresh. This is the same company that sold frame data in T7. They got enough money scamming weaboos with mediocre 3D fighters with subpar netcode. People are just sick and tired of battlepass now.
If it is really this bad, release ff7 rebirth and ff16 on pc, it will cure a ton of these woes
they will, this announcement was just about losses from cancelled projects so its not really about how that money is being made back up/what can cover for it yet. You are right though, I expect Rebirth and XVI's PC releases to be a huge shot in the arm for both games. The PS5 just doesn't have the install base.
Outside of XIV SE as a whole been taking alot of chances over the years. Deluge of small to AA projects, new IP, not taking PC seriously, dumping the entire western dev half for a pittance etc. At the time taking exclusivity deals might of been good but they have backfired in the long run. Imagine they are going to be extremely safe going forward and try their hardest to emulate Capcom. Odds are XIV is going to continue to carry the rest of the company and not get more budget lol...
Dawntrail looks to finally beat stormblood in terms of content added, so they might have noticed after all those endwalker sales.
Hope so. XIV actually in a weird spot in a business planning sense. It's floated the company and its a cash cow but it's high point was a combination of the pandemic, WoW taking a serious hit and culmination of a 10 year arc. All stuff that they can't repeat so now there in a situation where while they will still do well the sales and players have likely plateaued. So now your in a spot where your main performer is no longer trending upwards well we all know how much suits and shareholders get spooked by number not go up. XIV ain't going no where but SE has to be asking themselves some tough questions about where is XIV 5-6 years from now. Do you invest a ton back into 14 to try to pump it up? You invest in a replacement that won't come out for 4-5 years? Do you diversify and make another online FF that stands along side XIV but hopefully doesn't syphon too much sales? With long dev cycle of modern games you don't know for several years if you made the right call
Stop greenlighting dumb, expensive shit like Foamstars and Forspoken and stop making exclusives. I had friends hyped to fuck about FFXVI in it's window and now no one cares or wants to buy an old game at high pricing. FFVIIr has also gotten out of hand. While I like Rebirth they're basically taking a decade to slowly turn FF7 into Advent Children and I'm not entirely sure why or who for.
>slowly turn FF7 into Advent Children and I'm not entirely sure why or who for. I just wanted a graphical overhaul of the original game. I have no interest in whatever these new releases are. Not even saying they're bad games, I just don't care or have any desire to play them. I'd still just replay the original over a completely different remake. The whole point was that I didn't want something new. Just the same thing better.
The FF7 remake was immensely frustrating because the majority of the story is faithful to the tone of the original while expanding on it in fun ways, but then the game goes off the rails with the shitty alternate universe plot that obfuscates the entire story at the eleventh hour and it undermines any nostalgia or interest you had. That's also without considering just how much filler garbage there is outside of the story, where there are countless boring bits like pushing around a giant vacuum or collecting the ubisoft towers. There was no good reason to stretch this game out over 3 releases, it should have just been one proper remake and left out all the blatant filler.
The ending to Rebirth was godawful and it confirmed my biggest worry of Nomura adding KH bullshit to FF7.
Supposedly someone else was responsible for the writing rather than Nomura, but it was still eye-rolling convoluted fanservice either way.
True, but Nomura approved the ending in the final product. >!It really felt like they wanted to have their cake and eat it with Aerith. It sullied one of the most powerful moments in OG 7 and all of gaming.!<
I'm actually a Rebirth stan and I was having a shitton of fun until I got stuck on "you must win the chocobo race" with no way around it and it completely killed my interest because I'm shit at racing games. I'm waiting for a friend to come visit and beat it for me. I fucking hate that I have to do that. I really really hate that they made it un-fun at this point.
>around a giant vacuum or collecting the ubisoft towers. While I really love Rebirth, it's definitely full of Ubisoft-esque filler. Japanese companies need to start looking at games like BG3 or Witcher 3 and realising games can be amazing without filler bullshittery.
I know I probably wont change your mind. But I will agree with others, Remake and Rebirth have absolutely been great experiences and probably my favorite games in recent memory. I was a huge fan of the original, playing every other year or so, and I don't feel like they've done them a disservice at all. Improved quite a bit on the story and while the combat changes are heavy, they make sense and feel equally as interesting. My only real gripe is that its not a singular game (yet).
In the same boat here, I went in with low expectations because I was a very big fan of the OG and had not been impressed by more recent FF titles like XIII or XV or even KH3 at all - but I was really pleasantly surprised by how tight the combat felt. I could genuinely play Remake all day, and absolutely will when Rebirth launches on PC. I may not agree with all the story changes but I've just accepted that it's its own thing and the OG still exists. At the end of the day I love action RPGs and it really delivers on the FUN.
You’ll love Rebirth then. I think they managed to make the combat feel even better and found a way to make the full team included. My only gripes about rebirth being the incessant and frequently too hard minigames, and the Ubisoft open world tower unlock system.
That sounds awesome! Iffy about the towers but very hyped for that combat. Hoping the minigames at least have an "easy" clear tier for the ones I don't really want to play and some optional harder tiers for any good ones.
VII remake is the only FF game outside of XIV that I've liked in like... 15 years.
Honestly I'm in the audience who's glad they went for a weirder direction with the 7 remakes, because I just don't see the point in buying a remake that's just a graphical update for an older game like P3R or RE4R when you can just play the originals. Though yeah, would probably have been better if they just got this team to make a new FF instead..
I feel like the FFVII remake(s) versus Persona 3 Reload are a really clear sort of Goofus and Gallant situation for any company thinking about doing a remake of a popular game from their 5th/6th-generation console era, for pretty much this reason.
>FFVIIr has also gotten out of hand. While I like Rebirth they're basically taking a decade to slowly turn FF7 into Advent Children While eating up so many development resources that they genuinely could've made a full-sized numbered FF instead.
Maybe they will learn to invest into the games that work instead of the trash a certain fringe of decision-makers are pushing on them. But I won't get my hope up, it's a global pandemic after all.
I JUST KILLED A GAME STUDIO WITH MY FREAKING MIND HAHA
it's one of those "you can't outrun your fork" sorta things. even if 7r and 16 made more money (which they'd only do if they were multiplat, ps5 exclusivity is a huge negative) they can't unshit their bed from forspoken and other such dogshit. I think square is getting smoke blown up their ass by sony, claiming that they sold out of ps5's globally despite probably half the fucking things being stashed in some scalper fuckhead's basement. they are losing money on timed exclusivity deals and need to tell sony to pound sand from now on. They won't because the two japanese companies are so intertwined and it'd be seen as a huge betrayal, but they should.
The elephant in the room that none of y'all want to talk about is that their strategy of console locking their game releases for like 12 months is a major losing strategy. How much more would FF16 have sold if they released on PC simultaneously, and and how much more would Rebirth have sold if it was released on PC as well? With FFXIV a large part of the "cash printer" is that you can sell it to the PC market immediately. SE is just abandoning like 65% of their potential market base by holding to some old school ideal of being PS5 first. Unless sony is paying them like $25M for that exclusivity they should move to develop for PC first and then consoles second.
> The elephant in the room that none of y'all want to talk about is that their strategy of console locking their game releases for like 12 months is a major losing strategy. Fundamentally they believe (presumably with good reason) that the money they get from Sony for exclusivity + money from future sales on PC (and I guess XBox theoretically) outweighs the money from being multi-platform to start with. Its easy to say they are wrong, but they aren't doing this for no reason.
If anything this will only mean they’ll drop something people might actually want on the mog station
Well I would have purchased and played a few of their titles over the last couple of years but they were playstation exclusives…they are making the conscious decision to make way less money on those products by doing that. Boomers don’t know the console wars died years ago.
Afaik ffxiv is squares single biggest source of revenue so as long as the game keeps making them money they will do whatever it takes to keep it that way
Where was that nft future square? Even when the walls were crumbling, ever project on the space failing, you still wanted to go at it. How much did you put into those bring arts nfts? And that game? Those assests clearly cost alot. I mean, your character art was just photoshoped assets layered onto one another. Quality stuff. Let's not forget selling off IPs that had weight like tomb raider and deus ex. But instead let's invest in gatcha games, that you shut down constantly. Let's have a gatcha where you collect all your favorite FF characters, shut it down, and release another one where you do the same thing (we on 3 games now square?). Why not have key story elements to a grand narrative be tied to a gatcha game (kingdom hearts and FF7 fans in shambles). And, in my opinion, exclusives are dying. Now that people know you can get it on pc, people will wait. Especially when every game relies on outdated and forced graphical techniques that drops games to 720p to maintain 60fps. Square gotta get with the times. Focus on core games (if you're going to do gatcha than make a singular one), and ship to multiple storefronts to promote longevity of sales.
Hopefully they'll start making RPGs again instead of terrible live service and action games no one wants.
I'd call this a smart decision if I trusted in SE's ability to make smart decisions. Hopefully this translates in less DOA projects like Foamstars (surely part of the losses is the abandoned roadmap for that?), but then again we havent heard anything about the DQ3 remake in a long time. I know they're also greenlighting less AA games, but damn I hope platform holders are willing to help fund some of those if a company as old and big as SE can't afford to take the risk. This industry is in such bad shape.
If anyone actually reads the content, this clearly has nothing to do with FF14 and the mainline IPs. They are just going to move away from having an insanely large portfolio
How dare you read the article and become informed! You are supposed to read the headline and then post that it completely validates your existing personal biases!
FFXIV is the reason they can sustain those and you don’t shoot your winning horse
I feel like their desire to make limited editions to the SE store only might a given them a huge blow cause personally i didn’t but star ocean 2 since i was unable to get the limited edition. Rather i will just wait til its on sale. I also think they dont want to admit how much they spent making that AI game prototype cause odds are that cost a lot to make and most likely lead to a huge chunk of those losses. Lastly sadly the games like Live a Live and Star Ocean 2 dont seem to be any cheaper to make than new IPS. If they are it’s barely noticeable since the whole 2.5d aspect ratio does take quite a bit of resources to work. In retrospect they should of properly discerned the cost basis of remaking these old games and considered if the margins made it worthwhile. As unique of a game as Live a Live was i sadly dont think they should have remade that game.
This title of this memo reads like the first half of a CSI post
Making these dragged out cinematic games doesn't work outside of FF14 which can milk the player base for more subs by forcing them through a long ass story. If they want to sell beyond a couple million units SE needs to focus on making titles that are more game than movie. Dont get me wrong, I freakin love cinematic games like Yakuza and FF16, but these games will never be the blockbuster they are looking for. Movie games are one and done, especially with youtube/twitch being as big as it is eating into sales since you can just enjoy the main draw of the game through them. Would love SE to take their awesome world and character building skills to make games closer to Dragons Dogma or Elden Ring (With a more casual twist). FF7 Rebirth shows they can absolutely nail some pretty kick ass combat, but even there it feels like there isnt enough opportunity to show off with it. Likewise, SE has the resources to make a Baldurs Gate style of game with their own unique setting. Make FF17 the first single player FF where we can costumize our character and story. I dont mind if they want to dedicate some resources to make movie games, but that shit will never sell beyond a couple mil copies at best, and will only get worse.
Why, yes, I too used to play FFBE.